Where do you start?

“Excellence in performance and in life begins with a vision of where you want to go and a commitment to do what it takes to get there.” These words open Terry Orlick’s masterful book In Pursuit of Excellence in which he describes the mental skills and positive thinking required to achieve excellence. The book applies to anyone interested in learning more about the psychology of human performance.

But where do you start in pursuit of business excellence? The vision is a good place – answering the question “why?” Why am I doing this? Why are we making this effort? Why do we want to {x} in this way? Where “x” can be “make money” – “get recognition” – “feel successful” – “free ourselves up” – “serve others” – “feel useful” and so on. Why? Time spent on clarifying VISION will be time well spent in pursuit of EXCELLENCE.

Which model do you follow?

OK, so you know the WHY. You have the VISION. Who is to say what EXCELLENCE means to you? It might mean the best customer service in your field. Or the most profitable of your type of company. Or the fastest growth in your market sector. Or you may just have a very satisfying business and want to make sure it will survive and thrive in an ever changing environment.

Three models come to mind: Balanced Scorecard, Benchmarking and EFQM. Briefly:

Balanced Scorecard is an organisation-wide set of key measures that are intended to support the strategic plan. Everyone becomes involved in working to priorities that make for the best improvements in the scores. Provided the measures have been selected to cover all essential areas, then Balanced Scorecard will enable you to monitor the drive to deliver strategic plans. A typical Balanced Scorecard covers Finance, Processes, Learning and Customers. Experience shows these areas are inter-dependent which makes implementing strategy all the more interesting!

Benchmarking is about comparing the measures of products, services and processes against those of similar, and sometimes dissimilar, organisations. This creates new learning and drives continuous improvement. Benchmarking can be internal or external. Benchmarking can compare operations and processes; or between competitors comparing a product, service or function; or with similar sized organisations comparing functions e.g. HR or transport services; or generic, comparing the very best practices irrespective of the industry sector.

EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) is a 20 year old not-for-profit organisation of over 600 members of private and public organisations of every size and sector. The model offers a structured way of viewing, questioning and scoring what EFQM believe are the key business areas that enable business to implement strategies. Even EFQM do not believe they have the right answers for all time. They have recently updated their model to a 2010 version and intend to make further updates every three years. The model gives balanced weightings to nine key areas of business life, covering inputs, processes and outcomes. The thorough assessment process leaves an organisation in no doubt how it measures up and what areas of business life need attention.

Making the real difference with a Galilee Coaching and Mentoring input

All these models need expertise to learn and sometimes authorised consultants to use. As Galilee Coaching and Mentoring I take a pragmatic approach to every client. We select just enough measurement to achieve the real differences you want. That starts with your level of satisfaction and goes on to looking objectively at your awareness of opportunity and risk.

You may have heard of the Wheel of Life. It is a visual way of scoring your satisfaction with areas life to see how well rounded your life is. A well-rounded wheel will roll through life a lot better. A larger well-rounded wheel will cover more ground. Get it?

Less common is the Wheel of Business Life. I have developed my own Wheel of Business Life and behind each segment a quiz to flush out areas of strength and topics to work on. If you would like to try the quiz then book a coaching session with me – remember the first session with a new client is always FREE.

Start with your level of satisfaction – the Wheel of Business Life is here…Wheel of Business Life from Galilee Coaching and Mentoring